Abstract:The large corpus of travel writing about Meiji Japan by Europeans and North Americans varies widely in focus, structure, and source. This article compares the travelogue Japan Day by Day (1917) with the text on which it is said to be based—the journal in which the author E. S. Morse recorded his three visits to Japan in the 1870s and 1880s. By analyzing Morse's editing in the 1910s, this article shows how his authorial voice sought to accommodate the historical, social, and personal changes that had occurred since his travels in the late nineteenth century.
摘要:欧洲人和北美人撰写的大量明治日本游记，在主题、结构和来源等方面存在很大差异。本文将《逐日日本》(1917)与据传其所依据的文本(作者E. S. Morse记录他在19世纪70年代和80年代三次访问日本的日志)进行比较。通过分析莫尔斯在20世纪10年代的编辑，本文展示了他的作者的声音是如何适应自19世纪末旅行以来发生的历史、社会和个人变化的。
{"title":"The Self-Fashioning of E. S. Morse: A Comparison of Japan Day by Day and Its Primary Source","authors":"H. Hirayama","doi":"10.1353/mni.2022.0048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mni.2022.0048","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The large corpus of travel writing about Meiji Japan by Europeans and North Americans varies widely in focus, structure, and source. This article compares the travelogue Japan Day by Day (1917) with the text on which it is said to be based—the journal in which the author E. S. Morse recorded his three visits to Japan in the 1870s and 1880s. By analyzing Morse's editing in the 1910s, this article shows how his authorial voice sought to accommodate the historical, social, and personal changes that had occurred since his travels in the late nineteenth century.","PeriodicalId":54069,"journal":{"name":"MONUMENTA NIPPONICA","volume":"77 1","pages":"259 - 294"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43857875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Benito Mussolini’s own valorization in the 1930s of “superior students” who could become “exemplary citizens” (p. 132). This connection gives a clear indication of Sasakawa’s own political leanings (which many of his later supporters and financial beneficiaries managed to overlook). The book relates a number of details concerning the American Occupation of Okinawa that might cause readers confusion. One of these is a suggestion, on page 23, that Okinawa was occupied by the US in 1944; in fact the Occupation took various forms but began with the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. Another misstatement, presumably based on Article 3 of the Treaty of San Francisco, is the suggestion on page 20 that “until 1972 Okinawa was a United Nations protectorate under de facto US control.” In the same section (again on page 23), Gerteis writes that Okinawa had been “retained as a US protectorate since 1952,” which is more accurate. Though the treaty stipulated that “Japan will concur in any proposal of the United States to the United Nations to place under its trusteeship system,” the US never fully implemented such a proposal. For that reason Okinawa was never formally party to a United Nations Trusteeship Agreement, in contrast to other former Japanese territories like the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and elsewhere. These are minor points in what is an undeniably important and perceptive book on Japanese society since the 1970s. Gerteis’s attention to the movements and political motivations of figures outside of the usual centers of power does much to invigorate our understanding of contemporary Japan.
{"title":"Japan, 1972: Visions of Masculinity in an Age of Mass Consumerism by Yoshikuni Igarashi (review)","authors":"Michele M. Mason","doi":"10.1353/mni.2022.0063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mni.2022.0063","url":null,"abstract":"Benito Mussolini’s own valorization in the 1930s of “superior students” who could become “exemplary citizens” (p. 132). This connection gives a clear indication of Sasakawa’s own political leanings (which many of his later supporters and financial beneficiaries managed to overlook). The book relates a number of details concerning the American Occupation of Okinawa that might cause readers confusion. One of these is a suggestion, on page 23, that Okinawa was occupied by the US in 1944; in fact the Occupation took various forms but began with the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. Another misstatement, presumably based on Article 3 of the Treaty of San Francisco, is the suggestion on page 20 that “until 1972 Okinawa was a United Nations protectorate under de facto US control.” In the same section (again on page 23), Gerteis writes that Okinawa had been “retained as a US protectorate since 1952,” which is more accurate. Though the treaty stipulated that “Japan will concur in any proposal of the United States to the United Nations to place under its trusteeship system,” the US never fully implemented such a proposal. For that reason Okinawa was never formally party to a United Nations Trusteeship Agreement, in contrast to other former Japanese territories like the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and elsewhere. These are minor points in what is an undeniably important and perceptive book on Japanese society since the 1970s. Gerteis’s attention to the movements and political motivations of figures outside of the usual centers of power does much to invigorate our understanding of contemporary Japan.","PeriodicalId":54069,"journal":{"name":"MONUMENTA NIPPONICA","volume":"77 1","pages":"369 - 374"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43077405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
in conveying Japan’s shift from an imperialist, militarist, emperor-centered polity to a self-consciously internationalist, peaceful democracy? In other words, what distinguishes avian studies from any number of other scientific or zoological fields that might have supported the above significations? Although Culver does not address these questions directly, her book suggests some possibilities. The sheer variety within Class Aves—ranging from domesticated species widely raised for meat, eggs, and feathers to wild species appreciated as game and for spectacle—has supported an unusually long and deep relationship between birds and humans. It has also allowed for the mobilization of different birds as symbols for disparate concepts; for example, doves for peace and pheasants for democracy. Moreover, the ability to fly untethers birds from land demarcated by human boundaries, transforming them into (inadvertent) agents of transnationalism. A strength of Japan’s Empire of Birds is the breadth of knowledge demonstrated by its author. Culver’s exhaustive preparation for writing about the history of ornithology appears to have involved virtually everything short of earning a PhD in the subject. She describes learning to handle shotguns and skin specimens, participating in bird banding, and viewing skins stored at museums in Japan and the United States. She interviewed surviving members of the transwar cohort featured in the book, as well as younger ornithologists and avian enthusiasts. She also draws on a vast and variegated base of print sources, including personal letters, memoirs, scientific writings, photographs, maps, architectural blueprints, travel narratives, government reports, articles, essays, and obituaries located in archives in the United States, Japan, and England. At times, Japan’s Empire of Birds feels overburdened with direct references to the historiographic literature and with citations of ideas that historians have learned to take more or less for granted—for example, that “memory is notoriously unreliable” (p. 2) and that “photographs are not mirrors of the past but representations of it” (p. 5). For the most part, however, the often-scandalous lives of Hachisuka and others make for entertaining reading, while Japan’s relationship with birds offers an effective lens on the transwar histories of gender, science, animals, and the environment. As Culver points out at the end of her book, Japanese ornithology is “not just for the birds” (p. 222).
{"title":"Eleven Winters of Discontent: The Siberian Internment and the Making of a New Japan by Sherzod Muminov (review)","authors":"James D. J. Brown","doi":"10.1353/mni.2022.0060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mni.2022.0060","url":null,"abstract":"in conveying Japan’s shift from an imperialist, militarist, emperor-centered polity to a self-consciously internationalist, peaceful democracy? In other words, what distinguishes avian studies from any number of other scientific or zoological fields that might have supported the above significations? Although Culver does not address these questions directly, her book suggests some possibilities. The sheer variety within Class Aves—ranging from domesticated species widely raised for meat, eggs, and feathers to wild species appreciated as game and for spectacle—has supported an unusually long and deep relationship between birds and humans. It has also allowed for the mobilization of different birds as symbols for disparate concepts; for example, doves for peace and pheasants for democracy. Moreover, the ability to fly untethers birds from land demarcated by human boundaries, transforming them into (inadvertent) agents of transnationalism. A strength of Japan’s Empire of Birds is the breadth of knowledge demonstrated by its author. Culver’s exhaustive preparation for writing about the history of ornithology appears to have involved virtually everything short of earning a PhD in the subject. She describes learning to handle shotguns and skin specimens, participating in bird banding, and viewing skins stored at museums in Japan and the United States. She interviewed surviving members of the transwar cohort featured in the book, as well as younger ornithologists and avian enthusiasts. She also draws on a vast and variegated base of print sources, including personal letters, memoirs, scientific writings, photographs, maps, architectural blueprints, travel narratives, government reports, articles, essays, and obituaries located in archives in the United States, Japan, and England. At times, Japan’s Empire of Birds feels overburdened with direct references to the historiographic literature and with citations of ideas that historians have learned to take more or less for granted—for example, that “memory is notoriously unreliable” (p. 2) and that “photographs are not mirrors of the past but representations of it” (p. 5). For the most part, however, the often-scandalous lives of Hachisuka and others make for entertaining reading, while Japan’s relationship with birds offers an effective lens on the transwar histories of gender, science, animals, and the environment. As Culver points out at the end of her book, Japanese ornithology is “not just for the birds” (p. 222).","PeriodicalId":54069,"journal":{"name":"MONUMENTA NIPPONICA","volume":"77 1","pages":"355 - 359"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43274563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article examines the connections between author, oeuvre, and institutions as reflected in the discourse of intellectual ownership from the late twelfth to the early sixteenth century. I address the issue by reconstructing the genealogies of authorship and "copyright" in literary treatises and by investigating a controversial poem in Ungyoku waka shō, a hitherto overlooked poetry collection dating from 1514. By unveiling how premodern authors represented themselves and their peers by means of literary reappropriation, I illustrate the intertextual and intersubjective trajectories that embodied these politics of authorship.
摘要：本文考察了作者、作品和制度之间的联系，这些联系反映在12世纪末至16世纪初的知识产权话语中。我通过重建文学论文中的作者和“版权”谱系，并调查《Ungyoku waka shō》中一首有争议的诗来解决这个问题，这是一本迄今为止被忽视的1514年诗集。通过揭示前现代作家如何通过文学重新挪用来表现自己和同龄人，我展示了体现这些作者政治的互文性和主体间轨迹。
{"title":"Neither Plagiarism nor Patchwork: The Culture of Citation and the Making of Authorship in Medieval Japanese Poetry","authors":"Pier Carlo Tommasi","doi":"10.1353/mni.2022.0047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mni.2022.0047","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines the connections between author, oeuvre, and institutions as reflected in the discourse of intellectual ownership from the late twelfth to the early sixteenth century. I address the issue by reconstructing the genealogies of authorship and \"copyright\" in literary treatises and by investigating a controversial poem in Ungyoku waka shō, a hitherto overlooked poetry collection dating from 1514. By unveiling how premodern authors represented themselves and their peers by means of literary reappropriation, I illustrate the intertextual and intersubjective trajectories that embodied these politics of authorship.","PeriodicalId":54069,"journal":{"name":"MONUMENTA NIPPONICA","volume":"77 1","pages":"207 - 258"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47992767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Another factor that taints the image of Japanese internees is that after being taken into detention, many embraced communism. They did so in response to a Soviet reeducation campaign within the camps known as the Democratic Movement. Those internees who participated most enthusiastically were known as aktiv members. As well as assisting Soviet propaganda efforts, including a Japanese-language newspaper called Nihon Shinbun, these aktiv members spied on fellow Japanese inmates. Most internees quickly abandoned communism when freed from Soviet control, yet around 10 percent remained committed even after their return to Japan. Muminov explains that “these militant repatriates caused successive disturbances at the port of Maizuru, train stations and city squares, singing the communist ‘Internationale’ and, upon arriving in Tokyo, marching to JCP [Japanese Communist Party] headquarters to collectively join the party” (p. 23). Throughout the book, Muminov portrays the Japanese internees not as a homogenous mass but as real individuals, complete with their distinct experiences and specific weaknesses. He does not present them as saints, yet he remains sympathetic to their plight. This is notable in the final chapter when Muminov explores the internees’ often disparate lives after returning to Japan. This homecoming took place for many in 1949, when most ordinary internees were marked for release, but the last 1,025 were not repatriated until 26 December 1956. Many returnees did not find life easy. Some Japanese saw them as unwelcome reminders of an imperial Japan that they were working hard to forget. Others feared them as Soviet fifth columnists. Although some former internees, such as Sejima Ryūzō, prospered as architects of Japan’s postwar economic miracle, others endured prolonged hardship. One example was Itō Sadao. After years of struggling with work because of pain caused by frostbite, this former internee lit himself on fire, dying in his backyard in 1979 (p. 275). Straightforward tales of victims and perpetrators, good and evil, are convenient for nationalist politicians who seek to use history for their own purposes. For historians, however, nuance and multiple perspectives are needed. This well-researched and articulately written text may frustrate the former, but it should be warmly welcomed by the latter.
{"title":"The United States and the Japanese Student Movement, 1948–1973: Managing a Free World by Naoko Koda (review)","authors":"N. Kapur","doi":"10.1353/mni.2022.0061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mni.2022.0061","url":null,"abstract":"Another factor that taints the image of Japanese internees is that after being taken into detention, many embraced communism. They did so in response to a Soviet reeducation campaign within the camps known as the Democratic Movement. Those internees who participated most enthusiastically were known as aktiv members. As well as assisting Soviet propaganda efforts, including a Japanese-language newspaper called Nihon Shinbun, these aktiv members spied on fellow Japanese inmates. Most internees quickly abandoned communism when freed from Soviet control, yet around 10 percent remained committed even after their return to Japan. Muminov explains that “these militant repatriates caused successive disturbances at the port of Maizuru, train stations and city squares, singing the communist ‘Internationale’ and, upon arriving in Tokyo, marching to JCP [Japanese Communist Party] headquarters to collectively join the party” (p. 23). Throughout the book, Muminov portrays the Japanese internees not as a homogenous mass but as real individuals, complete with their distinct experiences and specific weaknesses. He does not present them as saints, yet he remains sympathetic to their plight. This is notable in the final chapter when Muminov explores the internees’ often disparate lives after returning to Japan. This homecoming took place for many in 1949, when most ordinary internees were marked for release, but the last 1,025 were not repatriated until 26 December 1956. Many returnees did not find life easy. Some Japanese saw them as unwelcome reminders of an imperial Japan that they were working hard to forget. Others feared them as Soviet fifth columnists. Although some former internees, such as Sejima Ryūzō, prospered as architects of Japan’s postwar economic miracle, others endured prolonged hardship. One example was Itō Sadao. After years of struggling with work because of pain caused by frostbite, this former internee lit himself on fire, dying in his backyard in 1979 (p. 275). Straightforward tales of victims and perpetrators, good and evil, are convenient for nationalist politicians who seek to use history for their own purposes. For historians, however, nuance and multiple perspectives are needed. This well-researched and articulately written text may frustrate the former, but it should be warmly welcomed by the latter.","PeriodicalId":54069,"journal":{"name":"MONUMENTA NIPPONICA","volume":"77 1","pages":"359 - 364"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41930502","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
an especially thorough job of conveying just how much the Japanese student movement mattered, to activists and policy makers alike, in the United States and around the world. A few notable lacunae notwithstanding, Koda’s study will undoubtedly become an essential reference for anyone interested in Japan’s vibrant, powerful, and globally relevant postwar student movement for many decades to come.
{"title":"Mobilizing Japanese Youth: The Cold War and the Making of the Sixties Generation by Christopher Gerteis (review)","authors":"D. Wright","doi":"10.1353/mni.2022.0062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mni.2022.0062","url":null,"abstract":"an especially thorough job of conveying just how much the Japanese student movement mattered, to activists and policy makers alike, in the United States and around the world. A few notable lacunae notwithstanding, Koda’s study will undoubtedly become an essential reference for anyone interested in Japan’s vibrant, powerful, and globally relevant postwar student movement for many decades to come.","PeriodicalId":54069,"journal":{"name":"MONUMENTA NIPPONICA","volume":"77 1","pages":"364 - 369"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48888867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
the experiments of those authors mining the popular/subcultural territory of the ero-guro-nansensu mode.3 Even with the narrow canon of authors examined here, Mitchell goes so far as to assert that “one thing they all had in common was that they no longer produced modernist works after the 1920s” (p. 239)—a statement that would foreclose the ample potential of reading Kawabata’s Yukiguni (Snow Country; 1935–1937) or Tanizaki’s Kagi (The Key; 1956), for instance, as modernist works. Nevertheless, Mitchell has presented a coherent and stimulating account of the four authors’ works under discussion, as well as an approach to the study of modernism that can, one hopes, be both appreciated and contested by future scholars.
{"title":"Japan's Empire of Birds: Aristocrats, Anglo-Americans, and Transwar Ornithology by Annika A. Culver (review)","authors":"Miriam Kingsberg Kadia","doi":"10.1353/mni.2022.0059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mni.2022.0059","url":null,"abstract":"the experiments of those authors mining the popular/subcultural territory of the ero-guro-nansensu mode.3 Even with the narrow canon of authors examined here, Mitchell goes so far as to assert that “one thing they all had in common was that they no longer produced modernist works after the 1920s” (p. 239)—a statement that would foreclose the ample potential of reading Kawabata’s Yukiguni (Snow Country; 1935–1937) or Tanizaki’s Kagi (The Key; 1956), for instance, as modernist works. Nevertheless, Mitchell has presented a coherent and stimulating account of the four authors’ works under discussion, as well as an approach to the study of modernism that can, one hopes, be both appreciated and contested by future scholars.","PeriodicalId":54069,"journal":{"name":"MONUMENTA NIPPONICA","volume":"77 1","pages":"352 - 355"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46378263","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Rhetoric of Death and Discipleship in Premodern Japan: Sōchō's \"Death of Sōgi\" and \"Kikaku's Death of Master Bashō.\" by H. Mack Horton (review)","authors":"G. Ebersole","doi":"10.1353/mni.2022.0052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mni.2022.0052","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54069,"journal":{"name":"MONUMENTA NIPPONICA","volume":"77 1","pages":"322 - 325"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43506843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Turbulent Streams: An Environmental History of Japan's Rivers, 1600–1930 by Roderick I. Wilson (review)","authors":"Philip C Brown","doi":"10.1353/mni.2022.0033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mni.2022.0033","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54069,"journal":{"name":"MONUMENTA NIPPONICA","volume":"77 1","pages":"140 - 145"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48919987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
to a certain extent it burdens readers with the work of drawing out larger critical perspectives and meaning. The image of Osaka as a city that was economically crucial in its own right set in opposition to a separate administrative center—a perspective powerfully proposed in the introduction—could, I think, quite effectively have been reiterated and connected to the analyses of individual plays. A more in-depth discussion of how bunraku constructed a perspective toward history and current affairs in the context of particular plays, specifically from the vantage point of Osaka, would have been helpful, especially for readers coming from outside early modern theater studies. I would have been interested, too, to see more discussion on how the various historical and contemporary issues that the authors introduce—international maritime relations, monetary plans adopted at different periods, and intellectual efforts to compile historical knowledge—trickled down to the public, or, conversely, how they were scrutinized by the public. In arguing for a countercultural perspective on bunraku, it seems the authors could have made more of an effort to link political affairs at the highest echelons of society with their everyday effects, and to connect consciousness at the administrative level with public consciousness. Of course, it is often easiest to suggest improvements of this sort when a work raises many new questions and avenues for exploration, and that is certainly the case here. In their very last paragraph, the authors connect bunraku performance to a long tradition of oral narratives while also suggesting a connection with benshi, who provided narration for silent films in the twentieth century, and with voice actors in anime and video games (p. 212). For me, the greatest value of this book lies in the promise it offers of unconventional ways of understanding the theater and in its gestures toward unexplored territories into which bunraku studies can still expand. Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century is a carefully researched book that illuminates the importance of various sociohistorical issues and enriches studies of early modern theater, literature, and culture. It is an important contribution, and one that can be integrated well into both undergraduate and graduate classrooms.
{"title":"Imaginative Mapping: Landscape and Japanese Identity in the Tokugawa and Meiji Eras by Nobuko Toyosawa (review)","authors":"Robert Goree","doi":"10.1353/mni.2022.0032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mni.2022.0032","url":null,"abstract":"to a certain extent it burdens readers with the work of drawing out larger critical perspectives and meaning. The image of Osaka as a city that was economically crucial in its own right set in opposition to a separate administrative center—a perspective powerfully proposed in the introduction—could, I think, quite effectively have been reiterated and connected to the analyses of individual plays. A more in-depth discussion of how bunraku constructed a perspective toward history and current affairs in the context of particular plays, specifically from the vantage point of Osaka, would have been helpful, especially for readers coming from outside early modern theater studies. I would have been interested, too, to see more discussion on how the various historical and contemporary issues that the authors introduce—international maritime relations, monetary plans adopted at different periods, and intellectual efforts to compile historical knowledge—trickled down to the public, or, conversely, how they were scrutinized by the public. In arguing for a countercultural perspective on bunraku, it seems the authors could have made more of an effort to link political affairs at the highest echelons of society with their everyday effects, and to connect consciousness at the administrative level with public consciousness. Of course, it is often easiest to suggest improvements of this sort when a work raises many new questions and avenues for exploration, and that is certainly the case here. In their very last paragraph, the authors connect bunraku performance to a long tradition of oral narratives while also suggesting a connection with benshi, who provided narration for silent films in the twentieth century, and with voice actors in anime and video games (p. 212). For me, the greatest value of this book lies in the promise it offers of unconventional ways of understanding the theater and in its gestures toward unexplored territories into which bunraku studies can still expand. Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century is a carefully researched book that illuminates the importance of various sociohistorical issues and enriches studies of early modern theater, literature, and culture. It is an important contribution, and one that can be integrated well into both undergraduate and graduate classrooms.","PeriodicalId":54069,"journal":{"name":"MONUMENTA NIPPONICA","volume":"77 1","pages":"135 - 140"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41994197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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